The Queen of Hearts
by syntax6
Summary: In early season five, during Scully's resurrection and Mulder's crisis of faith, they travel to small-town Nebraska to investigate a series of portentous crop circles and end up plumbing the mysteries of the human heart.
1. Chapter 1

I.

Scully frowned and muttered a curse under her breath as she surveyed the subject laid out on the metal table in front of her. Green and limp on one side, yellow spotted on the other, her plant had flat-lined during Scully's extended stay in the hospital, and no amount of fertilizer, water or cajoling seemed to bring it back to health. She spritzed it again with such force that the leaves fluttered once before drooping unceremoniously onto the table again.

"Face it, Scully," Mulder said from his desk across the room. "If you reanimate that cruciferous corpse at this point, we'll have to open an X-File on it."

Scully cast her gaze wistfully at the filtered sunlight visible through the dirty basement windows. "At least then we'd be investigating something." She turned to give him a pointed look, which he missed entirely because he was bent over the _Post's_ daily crossword puzzle. "Mulder. I've been back at work for two weeks now and we've barely left this basement."

He glanced up with mild surprise, the way he always looked at her now, as though he still expected her to be dead. They'd kissed a tearful goodbye in her hospital room last month, when he'd been about to end up jailed for murder and she was supposed to wither away like her plant. Instead, here they were again in the office, with Mulder free and Scully mostly recovered from the awful side effects of chemotherapy. Her spine was strong and her shoulders set, she was ready to shred any preposterous theories he cared to throw her way.

If only he cared.

"I told you," he said as he returned to chewing his pen and studying the paper. "Nothing's come up."

"That's a load of crap and you know it," she said, marching over to the stack of folders by his elbow. "What do you call this? Or this?" She yanked first one and then another X-stamped folder from the pile. "You have at least two dozen new cases piled up here, Mulder, and that doesn't count the ones gathering dust from before I nearly-." She caught herself at Mulder's stricken look. "Since before I got sick," she finished carefully.

He tried to snatch the folders from her hands but she used her newfound strength to dodge his grasp. "These are a bunch of nothing cases. They're hardly worth our time."

"And this is? Whiling away the hours catching up on paperwork and waiting for the phone to ring?" She spread her arms, a folder in each hand. "This is supposed to be your life's work."

He tilted his chair back and folded his arms across his middle. "And you were always the one telling me it was no life at all."

"No," she said, emphatic. "This is no life, staying cooped up here. One more week of this and we'll end up like that plant, Mulder."

He shook his head and looked away, dismissing her. She gritted her teeth and prayed for the strength not to thwap him.

"Is this about Kritschgau and the hoax?" she asked after a beat. "They tricked you with a rigorously constructed fake and now you're just giving up?"

"Once?" He waved his arms about. "Where have you been for the past four years, Scully? There's more lies in these files than truth, and normally, you'd be the first one to tell me that."

"Not lies." He knew damn well that she'd written most of those reports. "Uncertainties."

He gave her a hard look. "Semantics, Scully. Potato, Po-tah-to. Whatever you want to call it, we've been chasing our tails for years now while the puppet masters sit back and laugh. Maybe I'm tired of everyone yanking on my strings."

"Is that what you think I'm doing?"

He softened fractionally. "No, not you."

"So…what then? We just rot down here, doing the daily jumble and eating out of the vending machine? Last I checked, we're being paid to investigate cases."

"I'm telling you there's nothing worth investigating."

"Well, I disagree." She took the folder in her right hand and flipped it open. Oh, Lord have mercy, it was a report of crop circles out in Nowheresville, Nebraska. She felt Mulder's eyes on her as she skimmed the details supplied by Officer Bradley Gunther. Some farmer's crops had been plagued with unusual depression patterns all season long, and Officer Gunther suspected the work of aliens. "This looks…" She cleared her throat and closed the folder. "This looks serious. I think we should go to Nebraska to check it out."

At least then maybe she'd get some damn sunlight before winter set in.

"Nebraska?" Mulder echoed, aghast. "You mean the crop circle thing?"

She narrowed her eyes at him. "So you have been reading them."

He gave a half-shrug. "I glanced at a few. Scully, that's the worst of the lot. Ten to one it's a bunch of teenage punks playing some sort of mathematical prank on an old, grumpy farmer."

"Officer…" She had to check his name again. "Gunther has requested the help of the FBI. I think it's only reasonable that we supply our assistance. Do what you want, but I'm booking a ticket to Nebraska for tomorrow."

He watched her go to her table, sit down, and open her laptop to call up the Bureau's travel website. "You're sure it's not too soon?" he asked quietly.

She stiffened with her hands on the keyboard. The cancer had vanished from her body, but its footprints remained, leaving her thinner than she should be and more easily fatigued. So far, she was dealing with the after effect the same way she'd treated the disease—by ignoring it. "I've been cleared for fieldwork," she told him crisply without turning around.

"Yes, but—."

She spun her chair to face him. "Mulder, I don't care if you come with me tomorrow. If you want to give up the X-Files and go back to chasing psychopaths, I won't blame you. But don't you dare pretend your decisions have anything to do with me. I'm going to Nebraska."

"Fine," he said, an edge to his voice.

"Good."

The next morning she arrived at the gate to find him already sitting there, sipping coffee from a paper cup. Wordlessly, he handed her a second one, and she eyed him with suspicion and a little bit of resentment. She had to get up early these days to do extra core-strengthening exercises and then spend additional time in the bathroom fussing with her makeup so that she didn't look too pale. Meanwhile, Mulder just rolled out of bed, slid into an expensive suit, and looked like a GQ model. He'd even managed the air of ennui, with his careless slouch and stupid moussed hair.

"You're not coming along just to keep an eye on me," she said.

"Hell, no." He tilted his head at her. "I'm here so that when we fly halfway across the country to find out that this is some bored farm kid's idea of a good joke, there's someone there to say 'I told you so.'"

xxx

They touched down around lunchtime, so Mulder purchased some pre-packaged turkey sandwiches from the single counter while Scully retrieved their usual rented Taurus. She pointed the car north toward Lovell, sandwich in one hand with the other on the wheel. Her taste buds had gradually returned over the past few weeks, and they thrilled at even this simple offering. The turkey was moist, the cheddar sharp, and Scully ate every bite.

Mulder's sandwich lay in his lap as he squinted out at the passing scenery. Fields of wheat, waiting for harvest, rippled likes waves on the ocean. "What you do is, you take a board to flatten the stalks," he said. "You lay it down and walk over it a few times until the crop is good and smushed. You do this over again in a repeating pattern until you have a circle in a circle or whatever. If you want to get fancy about it, you can have the computer print out a grid with a more intricate pattern."

"I realize that's how it is typically accomplished."

"Then what the hell are we doing out here?"

Scully glanced out the window at crisp, cloudless sky and the distant russet line of trees. Sunlight spun wheat into gold, guarded by tall silos. "Admiring the view," she told him.

He sniffed the air. "The view stinks. Literally. There be cows out there, Scully."

"Funny, all I smell is an ass."

This earned her a grin as he sat back in his seat. "I just don't get it. For almost five years now, I've had to create a Powerpoint presentation with fifty slides before you'd even agree to look at a case, all of which had dramatically more compelling evidence than this horseshit. Which, by the way, you can also smell."

"You had your chance to pick a case, Mulder. You had weeks of chances. Now we're going to investigate this one." She looked sideways at him. "I did my research, you know. Many of these documented crop disturbances have proven to be the work of mischief-making humans, but not all of them. There are appearances in Scotland and one in Idaho that have thus far defied rational explanation."

Mulder cupped his hand around his ear. "I'm sorry, what? Did Dana Scully say the words 'defied rational explanation?'"

"I didn't say there wasn't one. Just that it hasn't been discovered yet. That's where we come in."

She took the turn for Lovell, a two-lane road that shot a straight line through yet more expansive farms. Thirty minutes later, they pulled to a stop outside a squat one-story brick building that could have housed any number of small businesses over the years. It had a bench outside and a dented green trash can. An American flag flapped in the breeze on the roof, and the stenciled letters on the window proclaimed, "Lovell Police Department."

They walked through the glass doors and stepped onto the worn linoleum floors. There was no one at the counter to greet them, but Scully spotted a young man in uniform playing solitaire on a nearby computer. "You should feel right at home," she murmured to Mulder.

He replied by ringing the bell on the counter hard enough to jostle the officer from his chair. "Oh, forgive me! I didn't hear y'all come in." He scrambled to put on his gray trooper hat and came around the counter to greet them. "Agent Mulder, it's an honor, sir," he said, pumping Mulder's hand. "And Agent Scully, too. Thank you both for coming."

"Bradley Gunther?" Scully asked.

"Yes, ma'am. Sure as I live and breathe." He grinned and Scully nearly took a step backwards in surprise. His teeth were straight enough but he appeared to have too many of them for just one mouth. Add in the thick glasses and the spot of acne dotting his bare chin, and Scully had to wonder if he was a licensed officer or just playing dress-up.

"Gunther?" Another man, this one older and more rotund, emerged from behind a door in the back. He wore the same colored uniform as Gunther, but dressed it in a more casual style, with an open collar and the sleeves rolled up. "How come you didn't tell me we had company?"

"These are the FBI folks I mentioned to you, Chief. Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. Agents, this is our chief, Sam Smith."

The chief frowned from Scully to Mulder. "You're the alien hunters. Gunther told me he was writing you a pile of nonsense, but I didn't expect you to show up all the way out here. I'd think the FBI would have more important matters to attend to than a bunch of squished rapeseed."

Mulder turned to Scully. "See? He gets it."

"Officer Gunther seems to think there could be malevolent forces at work," Scully said, and Gunther nodded enthusiastically.

"We had the first one late last year, then three more this summer—all of them targeting Grady Benson's place. It's escalation, sir. You know it is."

The chief put a beefy hand on the counter and shot his deputy an exasperated look. "Gunther, if aliens traveled millions of light years to earth, they'd damn sure pick a more interesting place to visit than Grady Benson's farm. Besides doesn't even talk to other people no more. What's a bunch of funny green men going to want with him?"

"Gray men," Gunther corrected, looking to Mulder. "Right?"

"Oyster-colored, really," Mulder replied. "With peppery hints, especially in the forehead area." He gestured at his own face for emphasis and Scully elbowed him in the ribs. Mulder dropped his hand. "What makes you so sure it has to be aliens?"

Gunther gave his boss a hesitant glance before answering. "Well, because I can't see an explanation for how they got there otherwise. I saw the first one last year when I was out flying with my girlfriend, Tracy, and it had to be forty-feet wide at least. Just out in the middle of nowhere." He retrieved a file and pulled out a stack of pictures. He placed the first one out on the counter, and they all moved to take a look. Scully recognized it from the file they had at home. The pattern showed interlocking figure eights, with dots in between. "I asked Grady about it, but he said he had no idea where it came from. He blamed the recent thunderstorm."

"What about the next one?" Scully asked.

Gunther pulled out a second photo. "This one happened in June. You can see it's even bigger and more complicated, what with these concentric circles here and the yin-yang of the overall design. But this next one takes the cake. Damn near crashed my Cessna in the corn when I saw this monster."

He showed them another pattern in the fields, this one designed to look like a dragon's head, complete with fire. "You're saying these are all on one farm?" Mulder asked.

"The Benson place. Yes, sir."

"Then the most obvious answer would be that Benson is creating these circles himself."

The chief let out a guffaw. "Grady? No way he'd destroy his own product like that, and for what? To get a bunch of attention? Grady Benson's happiest when he's working on some old car out in his garage, with no one around to bother him. The local papers have been trying to get him to talk about the crop circles, and he won't even answer the door when they knock."

Scully flipped through the remainder of the photos, one that depicted an intricate crisscross pattern and another with a face—a woman in a habit with a heart next to her. A nun in love? She was inclined to agree with the chief that no alien would travel to Earth just to leave this odd collection of messages, but she had to admit a growing curiosity about which human did. "Tell us more about Grady Benson," she said, and the two cops exchanged a significant look.

"He's never been a big talker," Chief Smith said gruffly, "but he was always friendly enough. Helped set up for the county fair every year. His squash took home the blue ribbon more often than not—much to Joe Kellogg's dismay. Grady never missed a Sunday in church until…"

"Until?" Mulder pressed.

"His wife died," Gunther said. "Cancer."

"Collen got it bad," the chief explained. "Pancreas, I think it was. Took her in under a year. Grady and her went first to Omaha and then to Chicago to try to stop it, but there was nothing the doctors could do. That damned disease ate away at her until there was nothing left." He blinked hard and looked away.

Scully felt Mulder stiff at her side, but she did not glance his way. "That's…unfortunate," she managed after an uncomfortable beat of silence.

"Everyone loved Mrs. Benson," Gunther explained. "She taught fifth grade and music at the elementary school, and boy, could she play piano. I took six years of lessons with her and never sounded half as good. She was a good teacher, though. Always kind. Used to laugh at her own mistakes. She made you want to get better without having to yell about it like some teachers do."

"The whole town turned out for the funeral," the chief said. "Grady put on his Sunday suit and stood there while everyone took turns saying how much they would miss her. Then he went home and shut his doors and hasn't much spoken to anyone since." He took a deep breath. "So you can understand why no one thinks he's doing this crazy stuff for any kind of attention. Attention is the last thing he wants."

"Grief makes people do strange things," Mulder said, and Scully's cheeks went hot. "We'd like to talk to Grady Benson."

The chief shrugged. "I'll take you out there if you want, but he ain't likely to be up for chatting."

Outside, Scully tossed the car keys at Mulder. "Your turn."

He caught them one-handed and halted to look her over. "Are you okay?"

"Yes. Fine." When he didn't stop staring, she folded her arms and looked him in the eyes. "I got us out here. You can pull some of your weight for a while."

They got into the Taurus and Mulder started the engine, still eyeing her as he did so. She looked straight ahead and tried to ignore the burning, itching sensation at the base of her neck. She touched it in the dark sometimes when she alone in bed at night, fingering the tiny raised bump. _We used aspirin for decades before we understood how it worked,_ she tried to reassure herself. _Human knowledge isn't linear._

"So, you're still thinking aliens?" Mulder asked loudly, making her jump. They followed the taillights on chief's car as he drove out of the downtown.

"No, of course it's not aliens. That does mean we can't find answers."

"My money is on Benson. I don't buy this song and dance about how he doesn't want attention. Those circles mean destruction of his crops, no doubt thousands of dollars, and yet he's not the one banging on the police station doors demanding the culprit be caught?" Mulder shook his head. "No way. Small farms operate on thin margins, Scully. If Benson isn't trying to stop the circles, then that's as good as admitting he's behind them. Maybe he'll fess up right away and we can catch the next plane out of here."

"Why? You have a hot date?"

"A date with destiny," he replied with flourish, grinning at his own humor. Another time she might have tossed back a remark about Destiny starring in one of those movies on the tapes that weren't his, but now she wasn't sure how the joke would land. Mulder these days joked near her, but not with her. "Aw, come on, Scully," he said with a sigh. "You really want to spend the night in this one-horse town? The motel probably has plywood walls and 70s décor."

"That never seemed to bother you before."

This shut him up fast, and Scully sat back with grim satisfaction. If he was going to pretend to her that everything was just the same between them, then he had better come prepared to do the full song and dance.

"This must be the place," he said as the Chief took a sharp right turn into what seemed like the middle of an empty cornfield. The access road was long and bumpy, the surrounding fields brown and barren. A white farm house with green shutters appeared on the horizon, and the Chief pulled to a stop alongside it. Mulder glided in behind him, and Scully got out of the car.

She knew from the information Gunther provided in the initial X-File report that the Benson farm measured just over 1200 acres, but standing there, the countryside seemed to stretch on forever. There was a white barn in the back and a scattering of chickens pecking at the ground under the slit gaze of a black-and-white cat lazing on the porch wall.

The place seemed functional. Scully heard the distant hum of a combine harvester, and the animals seemed well cared-for. But the paint peeled on the house, and there were empty barrel planters on either side of the steps. The upstairs shutters were drawn, the front door pulled tight, and a film of dust on the downstairs bay window prevented them from peering inside.

Chief Smith rang the bell and waited. No reply. He rang it again, longer this time, but still got no answer. He turned to Mulder and Scully with a shrug just as a large man came around the front of the house, holding a bucket of feed. "Can I help you with something?"

"Grady," the chief said with relief. "It's good to see you. It's been too long."

Grady wore mucking boots and a disgruntled expression. "What's all this about, Sam?" he said, looking past the chief to Mulder and Scully. "I've got work to get to."

"This here is Agents Scully and Mulder from the FBI. Seems Gunther called 'em in about the crop disturbances you've been having out here."

Grady scowled and started toward the stairs with his bucket. "Gunther should mind his own damn business. I filed no complaint."

"Why is that?" Mulder asked. "I'd think you'd need a record for any insurance claim."

"I didn't file any insurance claim either." Grady halted and stared Mulder right in the face. "I didn't need any suits out here trampling about the place."'

"Well, they're here now," the chief said. "May as well let us in for a few minutes so they can ask their questions, hmm?"

Grady grumbled something under his breath and set the bucket on the porch with more force than necessary. The cat stretched and jumped down from its perch, rubbing against Grady's legs as he opened the front door. Scully took the opportunity to study their subject and decided he looked much like the farm—functional but frayed around the edges. The ends of his dark hair curled into his collar, and the hem on his shirt had unraveled in the back.

He led them down a short hall to a dim living room jammed full with furniture. A well-worn easy chair sat in one corner, while a floral-patterned sofa with a hand-knit blanket took up much of the middle. Two wing back chairs and an upright piano rounded it out. The end tables were piled high with clutter—books and newspapers, empty beer cans, junk mail, a basket of yarn with what looked like an unfinished project laid atop the skeins.

In the back, up against the dingy windows, sat a hospital bed. It had been stripped and the sheets lay neatly folded on top. Scully saw a slim blue vase with fake flowers—posies, maybe—sitting on the sill in view of the bed.

"Sit if you want to," Grady said, lowering himself to the easy chair. The chief took one end of the sofa, and Mulder sat on the other. Scully wandered to study the wall of pictures, frozen snapshots of happier times.

"Officer Gunther says you've had at least four crop disturbances now," Mulder said. "Is that right?"

Grady snorted. "Why're you calling them 'crop disturbances'? Makes it sound like someone woke up the corn from a nap."

"What would you call it?"

"Vandalism, pure and simple."

"Vandalism," the chief repeated with some surprise. "If you felt like someone was destroying your fields on purpose, Grady, then why didn't you call us in?"

"Like you're going to arrest Kellogg any time soon. He's your son's godfather, Sam. Not to mention the best player on your bowling team."

"You mean Joe? What's he got to do with this?"

Scully listened with one ear as she examined the pictures. To her, they showed several decades of a happy marriage. There was a younger Grady, grinning from the seat of a tractor, shot from below and taking up the whole frame. To the photographer, Grady was the whole world. Colleen Benson posed with different groups of children. In one shot, she sat at the piano bench—the one just to Scully's left—with a dark-haired boy about ten years old. In another frame, she and Grady stood arm-and-arm behind an enormous pumpkin, both of them pleased as punch. The pumpkin bore some sort of ribbon.

Colleen seemed to radiate kindness in every frame. Scully noted the way that other people in the pictures leaned into her, how they would rather look at Colleen than the camera. Grady especially. She smiled sadly at the photos and drifted to the piano.

"Joe Kellogg has been wanting to buy this place for years now," Grady was saying. "He even came around here last year, when Colleen wasn't even cold in the grave, asking if he could take the east-side acreage off my hands. I told him to get lost, so now he's trying to spook me into selling."

"That doesn't sound like Joe," the chief said.

"Sure, it does. He always thinks bigger is better. And look at that fancy new car Charlene's driving. He's got to pay for that somehow."

"You mean the black Chevy Suburban? She's had that three years now."

Scully turned to look at Grady, who made a face. "Time goes by quicker than you think, I guess," he said. "But my point stands—Joe Kellogg wants to buy this place, and if he can make folks think it's haunted or whatever, then he could swoop in and grab it for pennies on the dollar."

Scully turned around again and pressed one finger down on the piano keys. A middle C rang out, perfectly in tune. Grady jumped up. "Hey, that's Colleen's," he called out to her.

"It's beautiful," Scully said. "I love the carvings in the wood here on the front."

"Her daddy made it years ago."

An old black-and-white picture of Colleen, maybe her high school senior portrait, sat on top of the piano. It was one of the few things in the room not coated with dust. "The piano is in tune," Scully said. "Do you play?"

"I pick and peck. Colleen tried to teach me but I've got no rhythm." He crossed the room to shut the piano so that Scully couldn't touch it anymore. "I don't see what my piano has to do with anything."

"Maybe nothing," Scully said lightly. She squinted through the dirty window. "Where are the circles appearing on your property. Are they visible from the house?"

"Naw, they're out in the western field, mostly. Farthest from the house."

"And you never witnessed anyone on the property? Nothing suspicious or unusual?"

Grady heaved a sigh. "Miss, I don't know how you do your job, but mine takes me from sunrise to sunset, three hundred sixty-five days per year. I come in, eat my supper, maybe watch a program or two, and then I go to bed for a few hours until it's time to get up and do the whole thing again. When I'm in bed, a whole passel of aliens could be doing the Daytona 500 outside and I wouldn't be the wiser."

"Aliens?" Scully raised her eyebrows. "Why do you mention aliens?"

Grady echoed her surprise. "You're here, ain't ya? I don't think the government comes out asking questions just because of a feud between farmers."

"You'd be surprised," Mulder muttered.

"You're saying you believe the government purposefully investigates aliens?" From her experience, no one ever took them seriously.

"I read the papers in the supermarket, same as everyone else. But you can go back to Washington and tell them from me—this ain't no aliens. It's Joe Kellogg."

"Well, then," Mulder said, rising from his seat. "Let's go have a word with Mr. Kellogg."

"Let me just wash up first," Grady said as he pushed to his feet.

Mulder looked at him. "You're coming too?"

"Hell, yes, I'm coming too. I want to be there when the jackass admits it."

"Jackass," the chief repeated. "Joe Kellogg was your best friend."

"That was before," Grady retorted. He stomped his way to the back of the house, and Mulder turned to look quizzically at the chief.

"Before what?" he asked.

The chief spread his hands at the room, at the pictures and the piano and the empty cot with the folded blanket on it. "Before she was gone."

xxx

To be continued...


	2. Chapter 2

II.

Scully grew up on base housing where everyone lived pretty much on top of one another, so the concept of having to get back in the car to drive to a neighbor's house was foreign to her. Nevertheless, when they arrived, they found a mirror image of the farmhouse they'd just left at Grady's place. The Kellogg porch had planters filled with purple mums and fat orange pumpkins. A welcoming wreath made from leaves in fall colors hung on the door, and Scully could smell onions frying through the open window.

The chief rang the bell with Grady standing stone-faced at his side. A woman answered, wiping her hands on a dishrag. "Sam, this is a surprise. And Grady, too." Alarm flashed across her features. "Is it Joe? Did something happen to Joe?"

"No, no, Betsey," the chief assured her. "Joe's fine as far as we know. But we have some questions for him. Is he around?"

"He's out working while it's light yet, but I can call him to let him know you're here. Please come in."

"Much obliged, thank you." Sam tipped his cap and they trooped into the house, whereupon he introduced Mulder and Scully.

"The FBI?" Betsey's face paled. "But we haven't bought any fertilizer recently."

"No, you've been too busy mucking up my crops," Grady said.

"What?" She looked from Mulder and Scully to the chief. "Sam, what's he talking about?"

Sam put a hand on her shoulder. "Why don't you go call Joe for us?"

Betsey did as she was asked and then served them all sweet tea in mismatched glasses. Scully took one sip and set it aside. Healthy again at last, her body wanted all the food, all the time, but her taste buds had not fully recovered from the last round of chemo. Certain foods tasted like metal; others like nothing at all. One night last week, she'd awakened with an extreme craving for pierogis, strong enough to drive her to the all-night grocery with her overcoat covering up her pajamas. By the time she'd boiled them and slathered them with butter, she wasn't hungry anymore. Somehow she'd eaten a dozen anyway.

"Grady." Betsey swirled the glass of tea in her hands, not looking at him. Scully recognized that special separation between two people; the kind of emotional chasm that opened up when someone died. She and Mulder lived it daily, only in their case the problem was that she survived. "It's—it's been awhile since we've seen you."

"Whose fault is that?"

She opened her mouth and closed it again. "You stopped coming to church."

"Didn't realize you were taking attendance."

"I'm not. I just-." She broke off and shook her head. "I left you casseroles," she said eventually. "A bunch of them."

"Pizza does me just fine."

Scully felt a pang of sympathy for this poor woman trying to reach out to an obstinate, cantankerous man. When Betsey gave her a rueful glance, Scully smiled. _I feel you_ , she said silently, and then shot a glare at Mulder, just because.

Mulder gave her a what-did-I-do look, but she didn't have to answer him because Joe Kellogg entered the scene through the back door. He looked like a lion in winter, with a large head and a full mane of gray hair. True to form, he let out a roar. "What's all this about?"

"Joe, these people from the FBI are here with Sam and Grady to ask you some questions."

"I filled out all the paperwork on the fertilizer."

"We aren't here for your shit, Joe." Grady's eyes gleamed with satisfaction. "We're here about the number you've been doing on my crops."

"What? Those crazy circles appearing out your way? You think I had something to do with it?"

"There's no one else with a motive. And we all know how you like puzzles."

"Sudoku! Crosswords! I can't believe you'd accuse me of this. Jesus, Grady, bringing in the FBI?"

"We brought ourselves," Mulder interjected. "Mr. Benson says you expressed interest in buying his farm. Is that true?"

"It's true," Grady answered, his voice full of accusation.

"I made him an offer for part of his land, sure." He frowned at Grady. "I never said I wanted the whole thing."

"Sure, you did. All those years playing cards, joking about winning my farm."

"Joking. The key word in there is joking." He regarded the chief. "Sam, I was trying to be nice. I thought after Colleen…after she passed, he might want to scale down a little."

"Like jackals. Waiting to pick at the carcass."

"Now, Grady, I don't know if that's completely fair," the chief said mildly. "He just made an offer."

"Honest, I was trying to help. Not so's he'd ever let me." He shot a meaningful look at Grady. "He's more stubborn than any mule I've ever owned. Less attractive too."

Scully thought she saw a ghost of a smile on Grady's face, but it vanished in a hurry. "What do you know about the crop circles that have appeared on Mr. Benson's farm?" she asked Joe.

Joe stroked his chin. "I've heard the talk in town about them. Maybe I've seen one or two of those aerial photos that Gunther took from his plane. But that's all." He looked at Grady. "You think I've got time to be messing around in your fields with six of my own to run?"

"Folks are spooked by the stories, and you darn well know it. If I did want to sell, who'd even want to buy right now?"

Betsey looked sad. "Are you selling, then?"

"Of course not. I've lived there half my life. They'll have to carry me out in a pine box."

Joe let out something of a guffaw, and they all turned to him. "He's always sayin' that. How he wouldn't move on from The Smoky Rose to try the new pub unless they carried him there in a pine box. Or how he'd never let Trevor Henshaw take the Queen of Hearts trophy—they'd sooner carry him out in a pine box. Grady, I hope you've got a mess of pine trees stashed somewhere because you're going to need a lot of boxes."

"Queen of Hearts trophy," Grady muttered. "I s'pose you took it again this year. Maybe you subbed in Trevor for me, huh?"

"No," Betsey said quietly. "We didn't play."

He looked up at her sharply. "What?"

"You and Colleen were our partners. For years."

"I'm sorry," Mulder said. "The Queen of Hearts?"

"Bridge tournament held at the church each year," the chief explained. "The Kelloggs and the Bensons have won every time. They're a formidable team."

Joe gave a tight smile. "Yes, well. Trevor Henshaw and his lot took it this year, I hear."

Grady was staring into his iced tea like it was a revelation. "I figured you'd just kept playing. I figured that's why you didn't talk to me."

"You never talked to us," Joe said fiercely. "We tried. I left you ten messages on that machine of yours and you didn't return a one of them."

Betsey bit her lip. "Maybe we could have tried harder," she said to Joe. She stretched a tentative hand toward Grady. "It's just, after she died…after the funeral…we didn't know what to say. We didn't know what words we could say to make it better."

Grady didn't move when she touched him, just looked at their joined hands. "Ha. Joke's on you, then. There are no words for that."

She squeezed him. "I know. I'm sorry."

Joe blinked hard and cleared his throat. "Are we done with this nonsense then? I still got work to do."

"There's still the matter of the circles," Scully said, pulling out the file with the pictures in it. She spread them across the table for all to see.

Betsey picked one up admiringly. "I think they're kind of pretty."

"Waste of a good lot," Joe grumbled, but he looked too. "What's these dates written on the bottom?"

"Those are the dates the circles appeared," Scully replied.

Joe hitched up his pants. "It wasn't me then, and I can prove it. This one here—" He picked up the criss-cross design and showed it to Scully. "—it says July 15th on it. Middle of July, Betsey and I went to Tulsa for Amy's wedding."

"Amy got married?" Grady asked.

"To a lawyer," Joe replied like it left a sour taste in his mouth.

"It's true," Betsey said. "We were gone almost the whole week."

Scully looked at Mulder, who shrugged. "Must be that alien thing then," he said, rocking back in his chair.

"I think it's kids playing pranks," Joe said as he pawed the pictures again. "You know how they are—dressing a scarecrow in ladies' undergarments, filling the swimming pool with balloons. Someone's just having fun with you, Grady."

"These designs are quite complex," Scully said as she studied one. "You'd need forethought and possibly even a computer to map them out ahead of time. This isn't a prank you pull after a couple of beers with your friends."

Mulder smiled at her. "And what do you know about such pranks, Agent Scully? Do tell."

She ignored him. "All I'm saying is that if it's kids doing this, they are smart kids."

"Ravi Iyer," Grady and Joe said together.

"Who is Ravi Iyer?" Scully asked as she laid aside the picture.

"He's the town nuisance," Joe said.

"Aw, he's not that bad," Grady countered.

The chief put a hand to his forehead as if to rub an ache there. "We responded to a call of a dead body on the football field at the high school last year. Turns out Ravi just got creative with a sheet, duct tape, and some soccer balls."

"I liked the one he pulled with the school copy machine," Grady said, leaning over the table with enthusiasm now. "He taped a picture of Betty White to the underside of the lid, so every copy came out with her face on it."

"Waste of paper," Betsey said disapprovingly as she collected the tea glasses.

"He does like circles," the chief conceded. "Ravi had a job at the supermarket down the road for a while. Then I gather a customer was kind of rude to him, so Ravi went out and put all the shopping carts in a circle around the guy's car."

Mulder smirked. "I want to meet this kid."

"Why was the customer rude to him?" Scully asked.

Grady looked at the chief, who shifted uncomfortably. Grady frowned. "You don't want to say it because you know it's true," he said to Sam. "Ravi's family is from India. His dad manages a small group of apartments in town, and his mom is a math tutor. They're good people, but they're raising an Indian boy in the middle of small-town Nebraska where everyone's been here for generations. Ravi, he looks different and he acts different. Not everyone's so keen on that."

"What do you mean 'he acts different'?" Scully asked.

Grady shrugged. "He's brown, so there's that. But he also dressed kind of funny. Prissy-like. I think he even wore eye-liner. But he's whip-smart, that kid. Smarter than the next three boys put together." He nodded at the collection of pictures on the table. "If any kid could pull this off, it'd be Ravi."

"Sounds like you know him pretty well," Mulder observed.

"Colleen taught him piano. He was her favorite pupil, actually. The two of them would laugh and laugh because he'd cut up and she'd let loose over his antics." He smiled, lost in the memory. "His mama sent over the most delicious food, too."

"Okay, we can pay the Iyers family a visit and see what they know," the chief said as he pushed back from the table.

"I'm getting back to my work," Joe said, but Betsey put a hand on Grady's arm.

"You're welcome to come for supper," she said.

Grady looked down to where her hand touched him. "That's, uh, that's real nice of you, Betsey, but I'd best be going along with Sam and the FBI here. I don't want Ravi scared to death when they flash those badges."

Joe paused at the threshold to the back door. "Another time then," he said.

Grady looked up and Joe held his gaze for a long moment. After a beat, Grady swallowed and nodded. "Another time."

xxx

"See?" Mulder said from behind the wheel. "This is right where I said we'd end up: with a bored and angry teenage kid."

Scully glanced sideways at him, at his smug satisfaction and the knowing gleam in his eye, and she saw a different bored and angry teenage kid. One who grew up with a big brain on a small island. _How claustrophobic it must be_ , she thought as she turned to look at the passing storefronts with their faded signs, _to feel stuck in a place, in a role, that someone else picked out for you._

Scully hadn't especially enjoyed her teenage years, but she had enough friends that she didn't worry about the popular girls and what they'd thought of her. She'd moved three times before she was ten years old. Her father the captain always returned home from journeys with exotic trinkets like nesting dolls with painted faces and red-hot candy that burned her mouth like fire. The others had screamed and spat the candy in the trash, but Dana had tucked it in her cheek and felt the warmth and tingling spread across her face while Ahab looked on with approval.

"Sure, maybe it's Ravi Iyer just having fun," replied Scully to Mulder. "I'm not convinced yet."

"No? The town prankster just happens to be a brilliant kid who feels—shall we call it alien?—in this Podunk little town. He dreams up the big one, the joke that will have everyone talking, and meanwhile, he's the only one who knows the truth. Knowledge is power, Scully. I saw it on an afterschool special once so it has to be true."

Scully rewarded him with a grim smile. "Maybe so, Mulder. But I've known a few teenage boys in my day, and if they were making giant pictures, they would have designed them to look like boobs or something similarly puerile."

Mulder played dumb. "I'm not sure what you mean, Agent Scully. Maybe you could draw me a picture?"

She rolled her eyes and he grinned at his own humor as they pulled to a stop in front of a white shingled house with an intricate set of wind chimes hanging near the door. Scully stretched to touch them, smiling at the tinkle as Chief Smith rang the doorbell. A woman around Scully's age answered, her dark hair in a long braid. "Yes, hello," she said, wary when she saw the crowd on her doorstep. "How can I help you?"

"Mrs. Iyers." The chief removed his hat. "Sorry to interrupt you like this near suppertime, but I was wondering if we might have a word with Ravi."

"Why? What's he done?"

"Nothing as far as I know. We just want to chat with him about the goings on over at the Benson farm. I believe you two know each other, yes?"

She gave Grady a curt nod. "Yes, for years now. But I don't know why you think Ravi has any knowledge about those…whatever they are out on the farm."

"Ma'am, I assure you we just want to ask him a few questions. I'm not here to make a federal case out of it."

"Then who are they?" Mrs. Iyers looked past him to Mulder and Scully.

Chagrined, the chief squinted and introduced them as FBI. "But they're not here to make a federal case either."

"They're surely not here as tourists," she replied, folding her arms. "I've heard the talk about the damage done to the crops. I'm sure that's a lot of money lost—."

"Samira," Grady interrupted gently. "Just let me talk to the boy. I promise you that I'm not pressing charges or anything like that."

She pursed her lips, torn. "He's out back in the garage, working on some junk heap of a car. Arjun bought it for him this summer as a way to keep him out of trouble." She sounded distraught at the idea the fix might not be working. "Come in, please. I'll get Ravi for you."

They trekked into her living room, which held a single armchair and one tailored sofa with plastic covering on it. No one dared take a seat. Mulder touched the nose of a carved wooden elephant displayed on a bookshelf. Mrs. Iyers hesitated at the door, lingering with an uncertain look on her face. She regarded Grady. "You know that Ravi thought the world of your wife. He would never do anything to hurt her."

"Colleen's gone," Grady said.

"Yes, I know. It's been hard for Ravi."

"And how'd you think it's been for me?" He growled at her.

She answered with a sad smile. "I expect it's terrible. I just meant, we always see the world with our own pain. Please wait here. I'll get Ravi."

She returned a few moments later with a skinny teenager dressed in a Kinks T-shirt and covered in engine grease. He didn't wear eyeliner at the moment from what Scully could see; those long-fringed lashes looked entirely inborn. "Hey," he said, holding up a palm. "Forgive me if I don't shake."

Chief Smith again made introductions, and Ravi perked up when he mentioned the FBI.

"No way. For real?" Scully and Mulder took out their ID, and Ravi let out a low whistle. "Those didn't come from a cereal box," he said with admiration. He wiped his hands on his jeans. "Can I see one up close?"

Scully felt a pain at the idea of handing over her ID to a kid covered in motor oil, but Mulder seemed charmed. "Knock yourself out," he replied, handing it over.

Ravi drank in the sight. "Fox?" He chortled. "Man, you must've heard it in school, huh. Were your parents nature hippies or something?"

"Or something. Listen, Ravi, what do you know about the patterns that have been appearing in the crops over at the Benson farm?"

The kid didn't look up. "Hmm? You mean the crop circle stuff?"

"Yes," Mulder said, snatching back his ID. "That."

Ravi gave an expansive shrug. "Nothing."

"The chief tells us you like playing pranks," Scully said.

He regarded her with those huge, guileless eyes. "Sure, sometimes. But I promised my mom and dad I wouldn't do that stuff no more. It goes on your permanent record. I've gotta think forward now, not back."

"Back?" Scully asked.

He shrugged again, less casual. "I haven't been over to the Benson place in more than a year now. Since before Mrs. B died. Mrs. B., she kept me on until the very end, you know. I was the last student she let go." He looked at Scully with defiance, as if daring her to contradict. "She said I was good enough that I could study music for real if I wanted. Maybe even get a scholarship."

"We've tried to find him another teacher," Mrs. Iyers said with weary resignation. "He won't go."

"I don't need it. You think I want to be some pansy-ass pianist my whole life?"

"Language," his mother told him sternly.

"Your mom says you're working on a car," Grady said.

The kid's chest puffed up. "An '87 Pontiac Firebird. The body's in good shape but the engine was shot to hel..um, heck. I'm rebuilding the whole thing."

"Mind if I take a look?" Grady asked.

"You like cars?"

"Who doesn't like cars," Grady replied as if there were no question. The chief chatted up Mrs. Iyers while Mulder and Scully trailed Ravi out into the backyard and then to the detached garage. Night had fallen like a blanket, sudden and dark, but Ravi had lights hung up over his baby. "Here she is," he said proudly, showing off a sleek black car with the hood raised. "Pretty sweet, don't you think, Mr. B.?"

"Let's see that engine."

Scully drifted back to poke around the outside. She found a rake and a hoe, and next to them, a bunch of flat boards. She took the top one with her back towards the light. Grady and Ravi had disappeared behind the hood. "You have to be sure to check the bearing clearance," Grady was saying. "You might think the crank has standard specs but it's not always the case so be sure to double check that the rods have clearance. Otherwise, the rod gets a little stretched and the big end pinches the bearing. See? It'll run for a while but eventually the rods will fail."

"Cool. I didn't know you knew this stuff."

"I've built an engine or two in my day. Colleen used to say she didn't worry about me leaving her for another woman…but a '69 Mustang, baby…look out."

Ravi laughed. Mulder looked quizzically at Scully, who held the board to the light. "What have you got?" he asked her.

"I'm no expert on crop circles," she whispered from behind the board. "But isn't this the kind of tool you'd use to make one?"

"Could do, yeah."

"And doesn't this look like a footprint to you? One with a little motor grease?"

"It does."

They peered around the board to look at the hood of the car. "Hey, Ravi," Mulder called.

The kid stuck his head out. "Yeah?"

"What's this board for?"

"It's a bridge," he said easily. "There's a creek out back between our yard and the fruit trees. After a rainstorm, it gets hard to cross, so I bring the board as a bridge. Especially for Loki."

"Loki," Grady said with a grin. "Where is that darn mutt?"

"He went to work with Dad today. He likes the apartments because everyone there gives him treats." He paused a moment. "Look, Mr. B., I don't know who's been messing with your property, but it wasn't me. If you want, though, I could come at night and stake the place out for you. I've got a digital camera and everything."

"Thanks, son, but I think your mother would have my hide for that."

Once again, Scully wondered why Grady hadn't done the stakeout for himself. She eyed Mulder, who shrugged, and Scully put the board back against the side of the garage.

Grady cleared his throat. "You know, you don't have to go become a concert pianist. You could just play for fun."

"I guess." Ravi didn't sound too enthused. "It used to be fun. Now it just reminds me…well, you know."

"I do know. That's why I tinker at it. I'm no good like you or Colleen, but when I play some of the songs she used to play, it's kind of like she's still there."

"I hadn't thought about it that way."

"Maybe…maybe you could come give me a lesson sometime," Grady suggested slowly.

"Maybe." He flashed a grin. "Would I get paid?"

"I suppose it would only be fair," Grady said after a moment's consideration. "Of course, you could take payment in trade."

"What's that mean?"

Grady nodded at the car. "You help me, I help you."

Ravi scratched the back of his head. "Tell you what, Mr. B. I'll think about it."

Grady smiled, a real one. "See that you do." He looked at Mulder and Scully. "I don't think this is our culprit, folks."

Scully wasn't sure, but she could see Grady didn't want to know if this was the truth. "At least have him look at the photos," she countered. "If he's not the one pulling the pranks, maybe he recognizes someone else's handiwork."

Ravi eagerly took the glossy pictures showing the crop circles. He scrutinized each one. "Whoa, these are badass, Mr. B."

"Language," Grady said, but there was humor in his voice.

"I wish I made these. What's this one, forty feet across? So cool."

"Well?" Mulder prodded. "Anything here jog your memory? You hear anything about these at school?"

Ravi blew out a short, dark laugh. "You think I'm looped in at school? That we get together at the soda stand and share secrets? They call me towel boy and faggot and worse, when they talk to me at all."

"What? What about the principal? Surely he doesn't stand for that."

"No," Ravi said. "He suspended a couple of the guys the first time when I reported it. I had one whole week of freedom. But the Monday when they came back, it just got worse." He shrugged. "So I stopped reporting it."

"But your parents…"

"Don't need to know," Ravi said forcefully. "You tell them, Mr. B., and I'll never forgive you."

"Maybe they could help," Mulder suggested, and Ravi turned on him.

"No! Jesus, don't you understand? Anything that hurts me is ten times worse for them. You think I want to do that to them? The only thing that's going to help is getting the hell out of here. Mrs. B., she got it. She told me that just because I was born in this hick town, doesn't mean it owns me. 'No one's going to care,' she said. 'Outside of Lovell, it only matters where you're going, not where you're from.' Well, I'm going, and I'm not coming back." His chest heaved with emotion, tears in his eyes.

Grady reached out a tentative hand to the boy. "Ravi. You're not…running away?"

"Hell no. I'm going to college. Early admission to U Chicago." He rolled his neck and relaxed a bit. "I need this baby up and running so I can drive her there by next summer. You think that can happen?"

Grady looked relieved and clapped his hand on Ravi's shoulder. "Yeah," he said. "That can happen."

Ravi nodded. "Good." He glanced down at the photos still clutched in his hand. "I'm sorry I can't help you with these. Maybe you could ask Mel Williams."

"Mel?" Grady wondered aloud. "What's he got to do with this?"

"You've seen the drawings he has up at his place. These kind of remind me of those."

"Mel and Mel—Melvin and Melinda, that is—they run the diner in town." He looked at Ravi. "Those posters they have are by a famous artist."

"Duh. M.C. Escher. I know who the dude is." He handed the photos back to Mulder. "But Mel likes to doodle the same kind of freaky designs. I've seen him sometimes with his pen and notebook. Maybe he can help you."

Mulder and Scully followed Grady through the dark backyard toward the warm yellow light coming from the house. "Mel Williams dated Colleen back in high school, before we got together. He's always fancied himself a genius. Got into MENSA and everything."

"He have any grudge against you?" Mulder asked.

"Don't think so. He wasn't keen when Colleen picked me over him, but that was more than thirty years ago now. He married Melinda McGillicuddy and they had three kids. Happy, as far as I know. Colleen used to take them pies to sell in the diner whenever our strawberry crop got out of hand."

"Maybe we should visit the diner and talk to him," Scully said as they mounted the stairs.

"Got to wait until morning for that," Grady replied. "Mel's does breakfast and lunch only. They close up at four."

Mulder let out a deep sigh. "Well, then, we'll need you to point us to a hotel."

Grady stopped short. "That's easy. The Lovell Inn, right up the road there, across the street from the Ponderosa."

"That's the best one?" Scully asked.

"Ma'am, it's the only one."

"Oh. I'm sure it's…quite nice."

"I haven't stayed there myself. No reason to. But the Jorgensen family has run it for ages now, and they do a good job. Best you get yourselves over there, though. When we drove past earlier, it looked to me like the joint was jumping."

Back in the car, Mulder said, "What do you think counts as 'jumping' in these parts, Scully? Square dancing competition in town?"

"Just drive."

"I'd like to point out again that this was your idea."

Grady Benson had not been joking about the amount of traffic at the Lovell Inn. Mulder had to circle twice to find a parking spot in the neighboring lot. A welcoming scarecrow and pile of pumpkins flanked the front doors. No sooner had they crossed the threshold than they were nearly mowed down by three children, each blonder than the last, each wearing what looked like a black-and-white prison shirt. "I said give it to me!" One of them hollered, and Scully stepped briskly aside to avoid crashing into them as the kids turned around for another go.

"Don't think we'll need to set an alarm," Mulder said.

"Peter! Mary Beth! Stop torturing your brother!" A woman wearing the same striped shirt entered the lobby, her cheeks flushed pink and a can of beer in her hand. Scully could see now that the shirt had writing on the front. "Penny-tentiary," it said. "Inmate #37."

"Can I help you?" A man wearing a brown vest and round glasses looked up from the main desk.

Two rooms in the non-screaming section, Scully thought as a gang of teenagers in the same damn shirt came whooping into the lobby.

"We'd like two rooms for the night," Mulder said, taking out his travel card.

The man frowned. "I'm sorry, but we're booked up. The Penny family reunion is here for the long weekend, and they've got the run of the place."

Scully felt her hot bath slipping away. "You have nothing at all?" she asked.

He peered over his glasses at her. "Well, there's just the one room left. It's got a king-sized bed but—."

"We'll take it," Scully said, slapping her own card down. She was tired enough that she didn't really care what Mulder did on his half of the bed. She'd sleep in the bathtub, if it came to that.

"—it's the honeymoon suite," the man finished.

XxX

Notes: Yep. It took me twenty years to write a one-bed fic. Tune in next time for all the tropey goodness! ;)


	3. Chapter 3

III.

Scully stood there frozen, the card under her palm. "I beg your pardon?"

"You know—for newlyweds. It's $49.99 per night, but it comes with free champagne."

Mulder slid one arm around her. "Schmoopie," he declared with delight.

The man at the counter gave her a pained look. "Still want it?" he asked.

Scully elbowed Mulder in the ribs, which made him double over and had the bonus effect of showing off the weapon holstered at her side. "Ring it up," she said. Five years on the X-Files had shown her a million horrors worse than a honeymoon suite in this one-horse town.

At least, this was her thought before she saw the room.

"Oh," she said, halting with alarm just inside the doorway. "Oh, my."

Mulder crowded behind her like a kid at the zoo. "I want to see."

"No, trust me. You really don't." She dragged her wheeled suitcase with her into the velvet womb of the Lovell Inn.

The wallpaper was red and fuzzy, with an ornate curling pattern interrupted only by periodic pictures of naked Greek or Roman statues. Heavy red drapes framed the windows, and the bedside tables each held a silver lamp with red tassel fringe. The bed itself was massive, easily enough to hold Mulder and Scully and several of their relatives if need be. It was covered in a pink shimmering spread and bedecked with several heart-shaped pillows. One of them had white stitching that read, "I do."

"I definitely do not," Scully told it as she set down her case.

Mulder stood over by the side table. "Um, there's lube over here, Scully. Compliments of the house."

"Don't touch it!"

Too late. He was holding up the little bottle and waving it at her.

"I don't see the champagne, though. We've got two glasses here, and an ice bucket with no ice. Oh, wait. Here it is." He held up the world's tiniest bottle of champagne. "Good thing they threw in actual lubricant, Scully, because this definitely wouldn't be enough on its own. They expect two adults to drink this?"

"Clearly not," she replied. "Because I can see the dust on it from here. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to see what fresh hell the bathroom holds."

"Wait," he said, heading for the bed. He did a backwards flop into it, overcoat and all. She noted with dismay that he seemed to take up much more room than she'd originally imagined. "Are you a righty or a lefty?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Which side?" he asked, wiggling in. "Right or left?"

She pursed her lips at him. "I don't know, Mulder. I usually sleep in the middle."

"What a coincidence. So do I."

She shut the door on his smug grin and was relieved to see that the bathroom was mostly free of the 1970s porn shoot décor. A vase of fake red roses sat on the back of the toilet, and there was a champagne-style plastic bottle of bubble bath by the edge of the Jacuzzi tub. Any other day, she might have been tempted. But not with Mulder sitting on the other side of the door. At least there was a stand-up shower too. She peeked and shuddered when she saw it had a bench seat included.

After washing her hands twice, she returned to find Mulder flipping channels on the TV. "I think for honeymooners, they should at least throw in a free movie," he said.

"I imagine the honeymooners have better things to do," she said before she could think it through.

Mulder struggled to sit up against the many pillows. "Scully! What do you imagine? Come here and tell me all about it." He patted the mattress next to him.

"No," she said flatly. "Let's go eat. I'm starving."

They dodged Penny family inmates of various sizes and went across the street to the Ponderosa. Scully's hamburger wasn't bad, but the coffee tasted like it had been brewed in a pothole. "Did they have a coffee machine in that room?" she asked. She'd honestly tried not to look too hard at it.

"You mean our room?" Mulder teased. "Yes, I think so. No telling how old the coffee is, though."

"Maybe I'll try tea."

After dinner, Mulder went for a run and Scully lay fully clothed on top of the sparkly pink bedspread. "Oh my God," she said when she realized there was a mirror on the ceiling. She grabbed the remote and turned on the TV louder than she needed. It was just that she could hear the mirror screaming at her.

The next thing she knew, Mulder was shaking her awake. "You're okay," he said with obvious relief when she opened her eyes. He stood over her wearing sweat pants and a damp, dark gray T-shirt. He smelled like sweat. Like sex. Or maybe that was just the mirror talking.

"What are you doing?" She scrambled up the bed, surprised to find him on her side.

"I brought you coffee from the corner store," he said, raising a paper cup to show her. "But then I got back here to find you unconscious and I got worried."

She gritted her teeth. "I was sleeping."

"At seven-thirty?" He handed her the coffee and she took a cautious sniff. It smelled pretty good.

"I closed my eyes so I couldn't see the room."

He leered at her. "Found the mirror, did you?"

"It's kind of hard to miss."

He pulled a bottle of water from somewhere—his pants? Better not to think about that too much. After he'd drained half of it, he nodded at the bathroom. "Mind if I take a shower?"

"Knock yourself out."

She sat cross-legged on the bed and sipped the coffee, trying not to listen to the water droplets bouncing off of Mulder's naked body. He emerged dressed in a different gray T-shirt and the same sweatpants. She could smell the shower gel on him. "Forget the crop circles, Scully. We have a bigger mystery to solve."

"What's that?"

"Why anyone would come here for their honeymoon."

She couldn't help it. She laughed. He toweled off his head once more and hung the wet towel back in the bathroom. "Anything on?" he asked when he reappeared.

"Not a thing."

He looked around the horrid room. "We could, um, play cards."

"Yes," she said with relief. "Cards."

He checked his case and his coat. "Cancel that. No deck."

Scully reached to the nightstand to check there on the off chance of finding cards, but then remembered the lube and thought better of it. "I'll just go get changed then."

She put on her pajamas in the bathroom, glad she'd brought a set of red and blue flannel night clothes that clearly said _I want to be warm_ and not _take me now_. Not that she owned a lot of _take me now_ clothes. The few she had were probably older than the tiny bottle of champagne. Scully repressed a sigh as she brushed her teeth. "One night," she told the woman in the mirror. "That's all."

Mulder was lounging atop the bed, taking more than his fair share. The look on his face dared her to say anything so she ignored him extra hard as she resumed her spot on the other side. "I thought of what we could play," he said.

"Or we could just go to sleep."

"Scully, kindergartners don't go to bed this early." He gave her a concerned look. "You're not feeling sick, are you?"

Now she did sigh. "No, I'm perfectly fine. Tell me then—what should we play?" God help her if he suggested I Spy.

"Truth or dare."

"No."

"Too chicken?" He flapped his arms at her.

"Too old. No one over fifteen plays that game, Mulder."

"Aw, come on. We're stuck here, nothing to do. It'll be team bonding. I hear you're into that now."

She gave him a baleful look. "At an organized FBI seminar, Mulder. Not in a poor imitation of a 1975 brothel."

He shrugged. "Here's where we are. Gotta play the hand you're dealt. Look, I'll even let you go first." He hugged one of the heart-shaped pillows to his chest. "Please?"

She glared at him, but she was torn. Here at last was the opportunity to have one of the Mulder mysteries of the world revealed to her. "Okay," she said finally. "But I reserve the right to stop it at any time."

He spread his hand in gallant fashion. "Of course."

She grabbed one of the pillows and held it her lap, like it could protect her from what was to come. "Okay, truth or dare."

"Truth," he blurted before she could even finish her sentence.

"All right. Truth. I need to know—you come to the office dressed like a GQ catalogue, with expensive suits and shoes to match. But then otherwise you dress like…like that. Faded T-shirts with holes in them and sneakers that could probably walk around on their own."

He rolled over and admired his reflection in the mirror. "Is there a question in there someplace, Scully?"

"What gives?"

"That's it? That's your question?"

"Yes. Why do you yoyo from Armani to homeless drifter?"

He leaned down to survey his clothes. "They aren't that bad, are they?"

"Answer the question."

"Fine. I have a personal shopper. She picks out the suits and shirts, and I wear them. On weekends and after work, I dress myself." He spread his arms. "You're looking at the real deal here, Scully." He sat up and bounced the bed. "My turn! Truth or dare?"

She bit her lip and considered. "Truth," she said, squeezing her eyes shut as she answered.

"What's the worst trouble you got into as a kid?"

She opened one eye to look at him. He had his chin resting on one of the heart pillows, his expression expectant.

"Come on," he said when she didn't answer. "There must be something. You cheated on a test. You drank your father's beer. Oh, or maybe you went streaking on school property…something!"

"The worst?" she said, leaning back. It was an ugly story and she didn't like to tell it, but she'd promised the truth. "The worst was when I was fourteen. I stole a shirt." She eyed him. "From a department store."

"That's it?" Mulder seemed disappointed.

"It's the context that makes it so awful. You have to understand—my parents were raising four kids on one Navy salary. My mom could pinch a penny so hard it yelped. As a result, most of my clothes were originally Melissa's clothes. Pretty much only my underwear was bought new, while she got a whole new wardrobe each year, even if it mostly came from discount racks. Anyway, I really wanted this tie-dye off-the-shoulder shirt but it cost more than twenty dollars, which was a lot of money at the time. Mom said no way. She said we'd only be paying for the label and I could make a T-shirt like it for a fraction of the cost. But I didn't want a handmade T-shirt."

"You wanted the label," Mulder said knowingly.

Scully nodded, remembering. "Everyone was wearing them. So I threw a fit and said she'd have bought it if Melissa wanted it. She denied it and grounded me for a weekend for my trouble. That's when I decided I could just take it. I took the bus downtown after school one day, when I made sure to wear an oversize sweater. I smuggled two of the shirts into the dressing room with me and then wore one out, hidden under the sweater. No one even blinked at me." Her face flushed hot remembering.

"Did you get caught?"

"Yes, the second time I wore it. I hid the shirt in my bag and changed at school, but that second time, I forgot to change back. Mom saw me and hit the roof. I had to go to the store and apologize while Mom paid for the shirt with money we didn't really have. She told them they could press charges against me, but the manager said it was okay, that he could see I was a good kid." She swallowed. "I didn't feel so good. Not then, and definitely not in the car on the way home. Mom wouldn't even look at me. At a red light, we were sitting in awful silence when she said, 'You want to grow up and shame yourself one day, that's your business. But what you did at that store shames the whole family."

Mulder winced. "Ouch."

"I know. I didn't get it at the time. I thought she was over-reacting. Plenty of kids shoplifted and it's not like you got some scarlet letter for it. But later I realized that I was saying my parents weren't good enough, that what they gave me wasn't satisfying. I had to go out and steal to get my clothes." She bowed her head. "That's when I understood about the shame."

He touched her knee. "I think you've more than made up for that youthful indiscretion, Scully."

"Maybe. But I've never forgotten it." She drew a shuddering breath and forced a smile. "My turn, then. Truth or dare?"

He tilted his head, considering. "Dare," he replied, mischief glinting in his eyes.

Cripes, he called her bluff. "Um…" When she played this with Melissa back when they were kids, dares constituted a shot glass of toothpaste and that sort of thing. She searched the room with her eyes, looking for inspiration, as some of the Penny family broke into raucous laughter in the hall. She smiled as the answer came to her. "I dare you to crash the Penny family reunion."

"Crash it how?"

"That's up to you. But you have to bring back proof."

"You want me to get my own shirt or what?"

"Could be an improvement in your wardrobe," she replied.

"Okay," he said, heaving himself off the bed. "No problem." He didn't bother to change, just slipped on his sneakers again and clicked the door shut behind him. Scully relaxed against the pillows and imagined him surrounded by blond, gregarious inmates. She watched the clock as it ticked off five minutes, then ten. After fifteen, she got concerned and wondered if she should go looking for him. Just as she started climbing off the bed, the door opened and Mulder reappeared.

"Here, catch." He threw something across the room at her and she didn't have time to see what it was before she caught it.

It was a lime. Someone had written "Call me cutie" on it in black marker.

"It's a pick-up lime." Mulder grinned. "Get it?"

"Oh, I got it." She paused. "Cutie."

He held up a small bottle of clear alcohol and a separate bottle of soda water. "I also found these. Gin and tonic. The game just got a hundred percent better, Scully."

"I see. Be that as it may, your assignment was to crash the reunion."

"Where do you think I got this stuff?" he asked as he set it on the table near the ice bucket. Scully put her hands on her hips. "Okay, okay. Check this out." He produced his tiny digital camera and showed her the latest image. "That's me and Peggy Penny, the family matriarch." Some enormous woman, open-mouthed like she'd won the lottery, had her arms around Mulder. "She's nice enough, but that hug is going to leave a mark," Mulder said, rubbing his bicep.

"Poor baby."

"I think you mean 'pour, baby,'" he replied as he handed her a drink in a plastic cup. Scully set it aside as she dug out her pocket knife to carve up the lime. She added a slice to each drink, and they climbed back atop the bed again. "Now, where were we?" Mulder mused. "Oh, that's right. My turn. Truth or dare?"

"Truth," she said as she sipped her drink. "Mmm, that's strong."

"Go big or go home," he replied. "Speaking of…tell me your last kiss."

 _You_ , she almost said. Or at least he sort of was. Eddie-as-Mulder had been millimeters from her mouth when the real thing burst through her front door and caught them on the couch. She could close her eyes and still feel his breath on her face. Another half-second and they would have been kissing for sure. The real Mulder had never said a word about the compromising position she'd been in with…well, him, and she sure as hell wasn't going to be the one to bring up.

Before that, there was a different Ed. She wasn't about to mention him either. A hard screw, you could go find that with almost anyone, but you couldn't buy or charm your way to a real kiss.

The silence stretched on as she fumbled around with what to say, and finally Mulder threw himself into the breech. "You know what?" he said, his voice over loud for someone sitting two feet away. "Never mind."

She felt heat color her face. She didn't know whether she was relieved or sad that he dropped it. The Mulder on her couch that night hadn't been real, but her feelings were and she had no idea how to cope with that. Maybe he already knew and didn't want to deal with it either.

"I have a more pressing question," he said, sipping his drink. "I've been meaning to ask you this for years. Agent Scully, do you believe in the existence of extraterrestrial life?"

She gaped at him. "That's it? That's your big question? Mulder, we've talked of little else for the past five years."

"We've discussed individual cases, and you've always made your position perfectly clear. But I'm asking straight out: aliens—yes or no?"

She waited a beat. "Yes," she said.

Mulder sat up in shock. "What? Wait, I want to record this." He made a show of reaching for his camera, and she swatted him.

"Stop that. Of course I think it's possible there is alien life out there somewhere. It would be the height of arrogance to assume that we're the only place in the universe to evolve sentient beings. I just don't think they're making house calls. Not yet."

"But you think it could happen."

"Sure. The physics are challenging but not impossible. Why not?"

He was looking at her like she'd become a different species.

"Same question, Mulder. Do you believe in extraterrestrial life?" She realized she hadn't asked him truth or dare, so he had an out if he wanted one.

He flopped over on his back and regarded his reflection in the overhead mirror. "I want to believe," he said at last, so melancholy that she regretted bringing it up.

"It's your turn," she said, nudging him. "And I'm picking dare."

He brightened immediately. "Yeah?"

She braced herself. "Do your worst."

"Agent Scully, I dare you to drink that ancient champagne over there."

Great. Warm, flat cheap champagne. Still, it could be worse. "Fine," she said, moving to get it.

He halted her with a hand around her wrist. "Wait. Unless it's not okay."

"Why wouldn't it be?"

"I mean all the alcohol…I don't know what you're taking these days."

"Nothing." She looked down to where he held her. "I told you, I'm fine now. Why is that so hard to believe?" The man had a stack of sasquatch photos that he kept in the places most men hid skin magazines. But the idea that she was healthy again was apparently too much to swallow.

His thumb grazed the tender skin of her inner wrist. His gaze was loving, but sad. "I don't know, Scully. Charlie Brown gets the football ripped away from him enough times and he starts to believe it'll never happen. You know?"

She'd had last rites. She'd watched the agony on her mother's face the day they had said good-bye. She'd felt the desperation in Mulder, felt him coming unmoored, sinking away from her as her body grew lighter with every passing moment. These memories, she had to live with now as part of the price for surviving.

Her pulse thrummed under Mulder's finger. "Am I supposed to be Lucy or the football in this analogy?" she asked finally.

He laughed and shoved her gently off the bed. "Go drink. I mean a real swallow, too. No tiny sip."

Scully took the metal bracket off the tiny cork, which did not want to budge. She stuck her knife it and pulled it out with a feeble pop. She sniffed the top of the bottle and made a face.

"Drink, drink, drink," Mulder chanted with glee.

She threw back her head and took a long swallow. It tasted like warm piss.

"Ew," Mulder said with delight, watching her.

She grabbed his half-empty water bottle and drank the rest of it. "Happy now?"

"Was it as disgusting as it looked?"

"Worse," she replied as she rejoined him on the bed.

"Then yes, I'm happy." He tapped her knee with his finger. "It's your turn."

She'd earned a good one after that wretched task. "Truth or dare?" she asked him.

"Truth."

She considered a moment. "First kiss," she said, settling in for the story. "Spill the details."

He gave a wry smile. "Technically, it was Becky McAllister when I was eight. She decided she had a crush on me, and one day at recess she chased me down behind the jungle gym and planted one right on me. Let me tell you—that girl was strong."

"That doesn't count," Scully protested. "I mean your first real kiss."

"Yeah, but that's not what you said," he replied, holding up a finger.

She sighed. "Maybe we should just call it a night." She started to roll over to turn out the light, but he stopped her.

"No, wait." He hesitated. "I'll tell you. I—I've never told anyone this story before."

Intrigued, she turned to face him. "What?" she asked softly, tucking her arm beneath her head on the pillow.

He lay down to mirror her. "When I was fifteen, I worked a summer job at a crab shack. Crab legs. Fried clams and fries. The place stunk to high heaven, and so did I by the end of the day. The only two things that made that summer bearable were this girl, Heather, who came in almost every day for an orange slushie, and this guy I worked with, Adam. Heather wore jeans and just a bikini on top, and I was always trying to position myself at the counter when she came in, just for the view."

"Did you ask her out?"

"Scully, I had no chance. This girl, she liked to smile at me, but I think it was only because I would start stuttering when she did. Her boyfriend was some muscle dude whose parents owned the biggest hotel on the island. Like Heather was going to dump him to give me the time of day."

"So you pined," Scully said reasonably.

"Desperately. As only a teenage boy can." He smiled a little. "Adam backed me up whenever he could, letting me take the register if it was his turn when Heather came in. His family was also loaded, but they were summer people—only visiting the island. They wanted him to get a job to 'build character' and also keep him busy while they sat around drinking Long Island Iced teas on their boat. Meanwhile, Adam and I had big plans. We were going to make a comic book series together. I would write the story and he would draw the pictures. It was about this boy who could go back in time, but only five minutes. This girl in his school, she gets killed and no one knew who did it. He keeps trying to save her but coming up short. Five minutes is never enough time to stop it. But he saves other people in the meantime."

"Sounds like an interesting premise."

"Yeah, we worked up sketches whenever we had the time, which was plenty since neither of us had much of a social life. His parents went away to New York City a couple of times, and we took their boat out. That part was pretty awesome. I thought if I could just get Heather to see the boat, maybe I'd have a shot with her."

"And did you?"

"No." He grew quiet, pensive. "In the movies, the girl always realizes she should dump the dumb jock for the sensitive, intelligent guy, but in real life, the whole summer goes by and she barely realizes he's alive. Or, if she does think about him at all, she probably thinks he's that weird kid whose sister disappeared. That maybe…that maybe he's the reason she disappeared."

She frowned. "No one thought that. Did they?"

"Oh, yeah. There was a whole rumor my sophomore year that I was the one who killed her and stashed her body in the woods somewhere."

"Mulder." She inched her hand across the blanket toward him. "That's awful."

He gave a careless shrug. "Probably some of them still think it. I get that kid today, Scully. Ravi? You can't change your fate in a town like this. It's only when you get free that you can be the person you really are."

She gave him a gentle smile. "I'm glad you got free."

He wasn't free of the memories yet. She could see that. He rolled onto his back and put one arm over his head. "It was Labor Day. The official end of summer. Half the island was packing up, going back to wherever they lived their real lives. Adam had a pack of wine coolers and we took them down to the beach—not where the tourists go. It's this rocky part you have to climb over to get to, so not many people ventured out there. We sat drinking and throwing stones into the ocean, talking about how maybe they'd made a movie based on our comic one day. I think we both knew it would never happen. That we probably wouldn't even see each other again. Adam's parents were threatening to send him to boarding school overseas."

He took a deep breath.

"Anyway, the moon comes up, and it's bright and huge. Almost like daytime. I'm hypnotized by how enormous it looks over the ocean like that when Adam leans over and kisses me." He checks her reaction with a glance. She doesn't change expression. "It was a real kiss," he continued. "He meant it."

"What did you do?"

"I let it happen," he said, twisting restlessly on the bed. "He held his mouth on mine for a few seconds and then he backed up to look at me. I saw it on his face. He—he wanted more. But I guess he could see on my face that I didn't, so he just said sorry and ran off. I yelled after him that it was okay, that he didn't have to leave, but he didn't come back. When I got back to the main beach, his bike was gone and mine was sitting there alone. I rode over to his rental house the next morning, but his family had already left. I never saw him again."

"What did you want to tell him?"

"I'm not sure. I just wanted to see him. To let him know I wasn't mad. It took balls, going for it like that. I turned into some squeaky idiot whenever Heather came around the shack, but Adam, he put his feelings right out there. And I guess…" He broke off, searching.

"What?"

"I knew what it was like, you know. Wanting something you could never have."

Scully knew he wasn't talking about Heather anymore. "Yeah," she said and put her hand on his chest. He covered it with one of his own and their eyes met in the mirror. It wasn't, she thought with a small smile, such a bad look after all.

XxX

To be continued...


	4. Chapter 4

IV.

Dawn filtered in through the curtains gradually, like steeping tea, until Scully could no longer deny that morning had come. She saw Mulder unmoving across the bed, his back to her, his shoulder rising and falling in an even rhythm. She burrowed her nose to the edge of the covers and watched him breathing. She knew every mechanism involved, from the respiratory center in the medulla of the brain that sent out the electrical signal to the muscles to way that the diaphragm moved downward to increasing the volume of the thoracic cavity, the the external intercostal muscles pulling the ribs up and outward. It was an unconscious process by design, completely thoughtless until the moment you realized those breaths would run out.

One, two, three. She counted them silently for Mulder. A certain number granted to each living thing, but the trick was that no creature knew its own value. This you could only see in hindsight.

Mulder stirred, stretching, and she could see the jolt in him as he realized where he was. She hid her smile as he rolled to face her. "This mattress is surprisingly comfortable," he said. His hair was flat on his head and completely endearing.

"That's probably because we're the first people ever to sleep on it."

He made a shocked face at her. "Scully! You dog!"

"I mean no one would every honeymoon here. Imagine starting your wedded bliss like this."

"Mmm, it's not so bad once you get used to it. And you never know. Grady and Colleen Benson might have stayed here. The decorating scheme certainly fits the time scheme."

She saw Grady in her mind's eye, kicking around that large farm house in a life that had become so small it fit within just a couple of rooms. Heat a can of soup, eat in front of the TV, sleep on one half of the bed. "Mulder…"

"Hmm?"

"What do you think happens when we die?"

The bed clothes rustled as he fidgeted for an answer. She hadn't had the guts to ask him before, not when she was going to find out the truth for herself at any moment. He nudged her under the blanket and her skin sparked. "You're the expert, Dr. Scully. You tell me."

"I'm not talking about the decomposition process. I mean what do you think happens to us?" She believed there was an afterlife, but it was hard to imagine it was really the stuff of religious childhood fantasy, in which everyone was reunited with loved ones on the other side.

"I don't know," he said tightly. "I haven't really thought about it."

Liar. She looked at him sideways. He wouldn't look back at her. For a long moment, he just lay there blinking at the ceiling. In the dim light, she could barely make out their reflections.

"The only part that matters is that we're no longer here," he said, and she heard it then—how terrified he'd been. She'd been busy preparing to leave the Earth. He'd been trying to stop it at any price. Somehow amid all the hospital handholding and kisses, she'd missed how alone they'd both been with the idea of her death. It felt scary even to poke at it now.

"Mulder...I need to know." She steeled herself. "Where did you get the chip?"

He looked at her, his smile without humor. "Truth or dare?"

Her heart froze. _Both_ , she realized. The chip was both. She swallowed with effort. "Truth," she whispered, and he reached under the blanket to grip her hand tightly. She held on with equal might.

"The Smoking Man gave it to me."

She closed her eyes against this horror, even as she realized she had already known. She nodded slightly to show she'd heard. "Is that why you won't take any new cases?"

"Wh-what?"

She opened her eyes to find him looking at her with surprise. "Is that the price? He gives us the chip as long as we shut down the X-Files?"

"The X-Files aren't shut down."

She frowned at him, hoping he knew how ridiculous this argument sounded. "Technically, no. But you can't claim they're active. This is our first investigation in a month, and it's hardly an urgent matter." Her mouth went dry and her palms got sweaty. She'd take it out if she had to, she would. "Tell me the truth."

She pulled hand away, shaking, but Mulder chased her and took it back. "You're not the price," he said fervently, and she wasn't sure if he was trying to convince her or himself.

"You said there was a deal," she reminded him.

"And I also said I didn't take it." He squeezed her. "I don't know what his play is here, Scully, but there are no strings attached on that chip right now."

She blew out a shaky breath. They both knew this was a lie. She lay back and looked at the ceiling, their hands resting entwined on her stomach. "All the more reason we should be looking for answers now, then," she said at length. _While I still can._

"I've looked in those files for answers for years now," he replied dully. "There are few to be found. The lies go so far back that they look like truth now—that arctic ice core was a thousand years old and still a fraud. Do you really want to spend your invaluable time chasing shadow puppets and tricks of light?"

"No one creates a hoax that elaborate unless they are hiding something even larger behind it."

He withdrew his hand and gave her a sad, amused smile. "You sound like me now."

"And you sound like me."

He sat with this idea in silence for a few minutes. "Maybe that's okay for now. On balance, if you think about it, we're still the same."

She considered. "So then I can choose the cases? And you'll come along?"

"Sure. If your presentation is sufficiently compelling."

"Compelling," she repeated flatly. "Try this" She thwapped him over the face with a dense heart pillow and by the time he could remove it, she had vanished.

 _New rule,_ she thought. The person who picks the cases also gets first dibs on the bathroom.

xxx

At Mel's diner, Scully reveled in a strong cup of real coffee, holding it up to her nose and breathing it in. The eggs and toast tasted just fine, too. Mulder was shoveling them in with a side of bacon three hands high. "You must be the FBI agents," Mel said, openly curious. He bellied his considerable belly up to the other side of the counter. Mel was a cross between Julia Child and Mr. Clean—completely bald and broad-shouldered, but with nimble hands and a bon vivant smile.

Mulder looked around at the rest of the clientele, who were dressed in denim and plaid, and then at his own dark suit. "What gave it away?"

Mel grinned. "Word travels fast in this town. I hear you're investigating those crop circles out at the Benson place."

"We understand you knew Colleen Benson," Scully said.

"Colleen? Oh, sure, we went to school together. She was a gem," he said. "A true gem. Never a bad word for anyone, always with a smile. The woman made the flakiest, most buttery crust this side of the Rockies. She gave me her recipe but it never tasted the same when I tried it. And boy could she play that piano. She taught all three of my kids, but not a one of them took to it, God love 'em." He shook his head, growing somber. "Life, it's a kick in the nuts sometimes, you know?"

Scully looked around at the framed Escher prints on the wall. "Grady Benson mentioned you'd dated Colleen at one time."

"Yeah?" Mel rubbed his face with one hand. "He said that? Funny. Yeah, I dated her back in high school for a few months. We had some fun times. Then she met Grady doing the senior musical, and that was that. She didn't have eyes for anyone else from that point on."

"But you still liked her," Mulder said.

Mel looked perplexed. "Well, sure. Everyone did. The cars were parked double on street the day of her funeral."

"What about Grady?" Scully wanted to know. "Did you like him too?"

"He's all right. We were friendly enough. He came in here for breakfast with her most Saturdays—two eggs, sunny-side up, sausage, with a side of hash browns and rye toast. I don't think he changed his order once in more than twenty years."

"He still comes in?" Scully asked.

Mel frowned and pulled out a dish rag to wipe at the counter. "No, not since Colleen passed. I told him once, when I saw him at the grocery, that he should stop in and have a meal on the house. He said he would, but he hasn't been by. I feel sorry for the man. My kids are grown, and it's just me and Melinda rattling around in that old house now. If anything happened to her, I think they'd need to come fit me for a huggy coat after a while. I'd probably just move in here at the diner."

"We heard you had a hobby to keep busy," Mulder said. "Sketching?"

"Someone told you about my sketches?" He seemed pleased. "Yeah, I like to draw a bit. Nothing too fancy."

"You have anything we can take a look at?"

"Sure, let me get my notebook."

While he was gone, Mulder looked to Scully. "I can't picture this guy raising hell in a cornfield, Scully. If he has any kind of torch for Colleen Benson, he hides it well."

"Let's see the drawings."

"Here you go," Mel said, bashful now as he slid the sketchbook across the counter to them. "Like I said, I'm no professional. I just like to mess around."

Mulder opened the book and Scully leaned over so she could see too. They were pencil sketches, mostly, with an occasional pen-and-ink drawing included. Mel had drawn a wooden barn, a set of gnarled trees, a wheelbarrow full of gourds. There were optical illusions rather like Escher's as well—stairs that looped around, patterned lines that seemed to move on the page. Scully stopped Mulder's hand as he turned to a circle done in a crisscross design. It was a pencil drawing showing wide, woven lines, shaded so that they looked 3D. "This one is nice," Scully said. It reminded her of one of the crop circles.

Mel peered over to see which one she meant, and he waved her off. "That old thing. Funny you should mention it. I was inspired by one of Colleen's pies. That design there, it's the one she used to put on top."

"What do you make of the problems Grady's been having with his crops?" Mulder asked as he continued to page through the notebook.

"Crazy stuff. Someone's got to be messing with him, right? But then why wouldn't he report it? Why wouldn't he put up floodlights and stand out there with his shotgun until he caught the SOB. I can't figure it out."

"Who would want to mess with him?" Scully asked.

Mel shook his head sadly. "Damned if I know. We never had any problem with him, nor did anyone else that I heard about. He was quieter than Colleen, but a good guy. He helped us put up the new playground down at the elementary school a few years back, even though he and Colleen never had any kids."

"Any idea why not?"

"I got the feeling maybe they tried but it wasn't in the cards." He turned pink. "It wasn't really any of my business. But they didn't seem unhappy or anything. Truth be told, sometimes I'd envy them, sitting here reading the paper together, drinking coffee or holding hands like a couple of newlyweds. I had to work here and Melinda ferried our kids around from one place to the next. There was a good five years there where we barely saw each other. But I guess now, I'm the lucky one." He looked up as a couple of new customers entered the diner. "Excuse me a minute."

"Well?" Mulder turned to her. "That one drawing bears a striking resemblance to one of the crop circles, but nothing else in here is a match."

Scully sipped her coffee, contemplative. "Mel didn't make the circles," she said. "But I think I know who did. Before we go any further, however, I want to make a stop at the corner store."

Mulder tossed a twenty down on the counter. "Why? What do you need?"

"A pack of cards."

XxX

They found Grady in his garage, where he was going through his tools. "Oh," he said when he saw them. "Sorry I didn't hear the bell. I remembered I have an old set of wrenches out here that still works perfectly good, so I figured I might drop it by the Iyers' place later. For Ravi."

"That would be nice," Scully said. She took out the pictures of the crop circles, and Grady eyed them.

"You're really not leaving here until you figure out who's making those patterns?" he asked her. "Could be a long wait."

"No, we're leaving today," Scully answered. She cocked her head. "I know who's creating them."

He raised bushy eyebrows at her. "Do you now? Well, go on then. Enlighten me."

"Why don't we go in the house to discuss it?"

He sighed and dusted off his hands. "Sure, I could use another cup of coffee, I suppose." They followed him into the house, where they declined more coffee but joined him at the wood kitchen table.

Scully laid out the four pictures, and Grady watched intently as each one came down. "These are yours," she said softly. "You made them."

"The hell you say." He sat back. "You think I'd go around tearing up my own crops like that? That damage has cost me thousands of dollars already."

"Which is why it's puzzling that you haven't done more to stop it."

"They just show up in the middle of the night. What do you want me to do?"

"Report it, for one. The chief says you never even registered a complaint." He folded his arms and glowered at her. "You must have insurance, but to collect on it, you'd need to get independent investigators involved."

"I'm not asking for any money."

"No," Scully agreed softly. "This isn't about money, is it? It's about Colleen."

"You don't know what you're talking about."

"These pictures, they all have to do with her." She slid the one that looked like the pie crust across table to him. "This one looks like her pies, doesn't it?"

He peeked once and then pushed it aside. "Maybe. It could be anything."

"This one with the concentric circles looks like the carved wind chimes on the Iyers' porch if you are standing beneath them."

"I wouldn't know about that," he answered stiffly.

"How about this one? Surely you recognize this." She slid the picture to him and he took it up in both hands. His eyes grew misty as he stared at it. "It's carved into her piano. We can go verify that now if you like."

"No," he said, his voice low and rough. "There's no need for that."

"And this one…" She gave him the last picture and then fished out her new deck of cards. She fanned them out until she found the one she wanted. "It's the Queen of Hearts," she said, laying the card down.

He stared at the card for a long time before picking it up. "She was surely the queen of mine," he said finally, his eyes on the card. "Ah, Colleen. You were too good for this world. Too good for me."

"You made the circles to honor her memory," Scully murmured, and he frowned and shook his head.

"No, ma'am, I did not make them. I see what you see when I look at these pictures. How could I not? I see Colleen everywhere. But I didn't go stomping around in a field to make these pictures. They just showed up there."

"I find that hard to believe."

"Believe what you want," he said, hoisting himself to his feet. "The first one showed up last July when I wasn't even here in town. I went down to Kearney to pick up Colleen's headstone. I can show you the receipt to prove it."

"I have no doubt you can prove you went to Kearney last July," Scully told him. "But how do we know that it coincides with the date that the first circle appeared?"

He poured himself another mug of coffee. "I guess you don't. I mean, I can tell you, but I'm the only one living here. I'm the only one this really matters to anyway. Or leastways, I thought I was until you showed up here with your badges, asking questions."

"Yes. You're the only one. You're the only one who would even know the significance of these images." She narrowed her eyes at him.

Mulder sat up straighter. "Not the only one," he said. "There's another."

Grady looked at him sharply, and a slow smile spread across Mulder's face. "Colleen," he said. "She would know."

"Mulder..."

"That's the answer, Scully." He was excited and rolling with the theory now. "That's why he never complained, not even when it destroyed his fields and cost him money. They're not just crop circles. They're love letters from beyond the grave."

Grady stared into his coffee cup. When he raised his head, there were tears in his eyes. "All I know," he said with emotion, "is that I didn't put them there. But I sure was glad to find them. Now I've got a passel of work to do, and I'd appreciate it if maybe you all could leave me to it."

"But if—." Scully tried to interject but Mulder tugged on the sleeve of her coat.

"That's our cue," he told her as he started to gather up the photos.

Grady lurched forward. "Actually, would it be all right if I kept those?"

Mulder paused a second to study Grady's face. "Sure. Of course." He started to hand over the pictures but then pulled them back again when Grady reached for them. "You know, Mr. Benson…you weren't the only one who loved Colleen. You aren't the only one to miss her."

Grady chuffed. "You think I don't know that?"

"Maybe," Mulder allowed with an incline of his head. "But also what these pictures show is…she wasn't the only one who cared about you. Colleen's gone, but your friends are still here, and they miss you."

Grady snatched the pictures. "Go on with you."

Outside, the sky had turned gray like a smudge, and the wind whipped Scully's hair into her eyes. She clawed it away and began to follow Mulder across the yard to their rented car. "You're not really buying that, are you? A ghost made those circles?"

"I never said it was a ghost."

"Mulder, that man in there made them. He's obviously still grieving her."

"He probably always will."

She hunched into her jacket as the cold set in. "So if it's not a ghost, then what are you suggesting here? Some sort of astral projection?"

A tree branch bobbed in the wind, catching the back of Scully's hair. She let out a surprised yelp, and Mulder turned around to free her. His warm hand smoothed down her head, his thumb catching the base of her neck. "I'm saying that maybe in rare case the love of two people has the power to alter the world."

He let her go and the cold rushed in again. She hurried to follow him to the car. As the engine roared to life beneath them, he glanced over at her.

"What, no further argument? You're just going to let me win that easy?"

She looked out at the wheat fields, how the gusts took physical form in the oscillating peaks and valleys, dancing atop the grains. When the weather calmed again, the wheat would stand like nothing had happened. She spread her hand on the cold glass of the window as if to touch the fields beyond.

"Scully?"

She dropped her hand. "I want to believe."

XxX

The end.

Notes: In the late 90s, I was living in a new city with few friends when I ventured online and found the XF community. I learned that you're never as alone as you think you are, not when there are others who love what you love. This is how _The X-Files_ has changed the world: by the strength of the people who love it and each other.

This story serves as a huge THANK YOU to you all who have been so kind in supporting my original work. Those who have read my book, talked to bookstores and libraries about my book, and/or bought my book, I am so grateful for your support. It takes one person to write the thing but a small army to keep it going, and my army is FIERCE, y'all. Thank you from the bottom of my slug-slaying heart.

I took prompts back in December thinking I could write a couple of short fics. I should have known better. This thing is fifty pages. But frangipanidownunder said by way of suggestion: "Mulder and Scully finally investigate crop circles." Here is one possible answer.

Xoxo, syn


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